


The Ends of the Earth

by clightlee



Category: Star Stable
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-08-28
Updated: 2018-08-28
Packaged: 2019-07-03 14:03:10
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 763
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15820353
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/clightlee/pseuds/clightlee
Summary: Nic Stoneground ponders the implications of falling in love with Aideen reincarnated





	The Ends of the Earth

**Author's Note:**

> I've been pondering this like all summer guys.

It is a calm evening, and quiet. The smoke from Stoneground's campfire rises straight up into the still air, twining with the tendril of smoke tracing his breath. Some nights, the pine trees moan and sigh like an impatient crowd. Tonight will be silent. It will be just below freezing tonight, a blessing from the late summer. Perhaps _she_ will come tonight.

Nic Stoneground feels that he has been ensconced in the Valley of the Hidden Dinosaur for an era, sheltered from the past and the present alike by towering cliffs and roaring avalanches. _She_ is his lifeline, the only part of the outside world he need remember.

 

*

Nic was born with wandering feet. Growing up in Jorvik city with a pair of university professors as parents, he was surrounded by maps and charts and thick, musty-smelling books about far-off lands and breathtaking discoveries. As soon as he could walk, he was running out the door towards the mountains, seeking treasure, then ruins, then bones. Nights found him reading until dawn, swept away by tales of Shackleton and Amundson, Peary, Hillary, Markham, and Heyerdahl. _Show me a mountain that's never been scaled. Show me a city, untouched for millennia. Show me the ends of the earth._

 

Of course, coming of age during the death rattle of the twentieth century gave Nic Stoneground little chance to add his name to the pantheon of discoverers he longed to join. The mountains had all been climbed, the ancient cities studied, then looted, then abandoned again. Seeking the ends of the earth put you right back where you started, which is why Nic gravitated towards the arcane. His academic relatives and colleagues- for he was, by now, a well-respected researcher and adventurer, a fellow of AAE (even if his explorations were made along trails already beaten)- were mildly dismayed. Nic knew that his talk of yetis and sea monsters isolated him, but so be it; if that's how he would find his discovery, it would be worth it. He took up flying, entangled himself with a half-sentient fridge, stayed away from his townhouse on university grounds for years at a stretch. He was on the lookout for another hew world.

*

 

He was entirely devoted to that quest, minding his own business when _she_ came along. He'd just crashed his balloon (again) at the foot of the mountains when she rode up, out of the sunset, earnest and wise but funny and clever, young, strong, competent. His balloon was airborne before he could get more than her name.

 

Perhaps he summoned her, later, inadvertently, with his words. _Naming calls._ An ancient Celtic superstition, whereby saying the name of a person aloud brings them to your door. Maybe he mumbled her name into the dying flames as we waited to be rescued- he just liked the sound of it. Either way, _she_ came to him, and together they carved a life out of the wilderness- a wasteland closed to the outside world for just enough time to make it a discovery. It was later that she revealed _her_ discovery: _she_ was the ends of the earth. She held celestial bodies in her hands, the power of dreams. Electricity crackled in her fingers. Now here was something nobody'd seen before.

 

He would keep her secret with his last breath. But in his heart of hearts, he knew that she was his greatest discovery.

 

*

 

Nic lights a pipe of fragrant tobacco and watches the smoke rise into the high, sunset-stained clouds. Until he met her, he was uncertain. Snowbeasts, winged horses, and walking deities were theories, and he was a crackpot grasping at myths and shadows. _She_ is proof that anything is possible, that there are more things in heaven and earth, that there is something left to explore. Terra incognita. The great unknown. Mystery and wonder, secrets and revelations. He thinks he is in love.

 

*

Nic has explored the Valley from peak to peak, surveying every crack in the ice, rappelling down every crevasse with the tools to measure its precise depth. Every bone he has cataloged; every layer of ancient ice, he has sampled and sent away. His maps were completed, revised, completed, revised. The Valley has given up her secrets, and yet he stays. For where else would he go that _she_ could follow? Nic takes a long draw from his pipe, exhales and, through the cloud of smoke, opens his ears. Perhaps she is on her way right now; perhaps she is already here, just around the bend in the trail. He strains his ears, and waits.


End file.
